


Nowhere But Together

by indevan



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a certain sort of connection when you've shared a womb with someone.  It makes you do things like follow them into death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere But Together

The road they were walking on was as gray as everything else in the Free Marches that she had seen so far.  At least, Bethany thought, they were out of Kirkwall and out of the city.  The air wasn’t as fresh or crisp as it was in Lothering but it didn’t stink like raw meat and sewage.  She kept to the back of their slow-moving expedition, wanting to enjoy what scenery there was until they had to go underground.  Aiden was with her, swinging Father’s staff around as though he were leading a parade.

“Brother,” she said slowly, deliberately. “Back when mother came…why were you willing to leave me behind but not Carver?”

She spotted her twin up ahead talking to Anders.  Well, no, that wasn’t fair.  Anders was doing most of the talking while Carver hunched his shoulders and made a prissy face.  She nearly giggled at the look of distaste he wore.

“I didn’t want to take either of you,” Aiden said, dragging her back to their conversation. “But I thought you would have understood having to stay back better than him.”

A wry smile crossed her big brother’s face that he was probably a little bit proud at her insistence on going with them.  Even if it was a bit dampened by his brotherly worry.  Before she could say more, Carver fell back to join them, looking peeved.

“I don’t know why we had to take your sodding abomination of a boyfriend with us,” he groused.

“He isn’t my—”

“We’ve already got you and Bethany.  What do we need another mage for?”

Aiden sighed and said, “Me and Bethany aren’t Wardens.  We don’t know the Deep Roads.  Why, who would you want us to take?”

Bethany saw a dreamy expression briefly cross her twin’s face and knew who he was going to say before he said it.

“Fenris,” he replied. “He’s a warrior and he could maybe he could light up the tunnels for us to see.”

She knew where he had gotten that idea.  The two of them and Merrill had been exploring the Lowtown market when she told them the story of this Halla with a glowing nose who had been ostracized by his brethren.  Yet, when they had to walk through the Wilds where the fog was so thick it felt solid, it was the Halla’s nose who led the clan safely through.

“He’s not a Halla,” she told him, giving a smile. “You just want him around because you fancy him.”

Carver went scarlet and exclaimed, “I DO _NOT_ FANCY FENRIS!”

Anders, Varric and a few of Bartrand’s hirelings glanced their way after his outburst.

“I do not fancy Fenris,” he repeated, much more quietly this time. “I just think having another warrior would make more sense than three mages.”

Aiden bucked Carver with his hip.

“You fancy Fenris, hey?  Does this mean I have to give him a stern talking to about treating you right?”

“Please don’t!” He shot Bethany a glare. “I don’t fancy him.  I don’t.”

“That’s why you say his name in your sleep, then?” Bethany teased.

While the three of them had to share a room in their uncle’s hovel, she and Carver had to share a bed, which meant she heard him mumbling in his sleep even over Aiden’s snores.

“He’s just…we just go sparring sometimes, alright?” Carver’s face was still bright red with embarrassment.

“Hey, Anders!” Aiden called, dashing ahead of them to run up astride of the other man. “Did you hear about my baby brother fancying our broody elf?”

Carver glowered at her again and said, “I’m gonna bury you in the Deep Roads, Bethy.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, stifling a giggle.

“Gonna make it look like an accident.  Everyone is going to be all ‘oh, where’s Bethany?’ and I’ll be all, ‘there was an ogre and, oh, I did everything I could!’”

She thwapped him on the arm. “Not if I bury you first.”

—

“Do you still have that headache?” Bethany asked.

“Stop asking,” Carver growled in a way that let her know that the answer was yes.

Bethany had had no idea how long they had been down in the Deep Roads but it had been a very long time.  At least it felt like it.  She could feel this place pulling at her bones.  Drying her skin out.  Ripping out her hair.  At least she felt mostly okay.  Her nose was a bit clogged from being underground in the dripping tunnels but the constant sniffles from Anders, Aiden, and Varric assured her that this was normal.  Carver looked ghastly, though, and it worried her.  His skin was pale and his eyes looked sunken.  When he thought no one was looking, he rubbed his temples as if trying to will away a particularly adamant headache.

“Sorry for being worried.”

“I’m not sick.”

Bethany sighed.  He was being difficult.  She remembered when he’d get into his difficult moods when they were little.  He would be contrary to everything she said and roll his eyes and go pout in a tree until father had to climb up and carry him down.  In the Deep Roads, there were no trees for him to scamper up and for four years there had been no father to bring him down.  So it was her job to pacify him.

“I didn’t say you were sick.  I’m just a bit worried.  We’ve been down here for a while.”

“Well, don’t be.  I’m fine.”

Carver marched past her, moving quickly to move ahead of even Aiden.  She sighed again.

When they set camp, she carefully watched him for any other signs of sickness.  If Carver got the flu down here or—Maker forbid—anything else, she didn’t know what they would do.  She watched him drink his share from the skin of water from Anders’s belt and watched him cram about seven deep mushrooms into his mouth.  At least his appetite didn’t seem to be affected by whatever it was that was making him look so ill.

“Very nice, piggy,” Aiden remarked, biting into his own share of mushroom.

Carver, whose mouth was so full that his cheeks were puffed out comically like a rodent storing nuts, could only glare.

When they set up blankets to sleep (Bethany had no idea if it was night or day but they were tired enough to sleep) she put hers near his.  Granted, this was a regular occurrence.  Even when father had built them separate beds once they got a room to themselves in Lothering—even if Aiden got his own bedroom—they slept close to one another.  It was familiar and safe.  Bethany honestly couldn’t picture a life when Carver wasn’t just across the room.  When he was a way at Ostagar, she had had trouble falling asleep without the sound of him mumbling into his pillow to lull her to sleep.

“You sure you’re alright?” she whispered.

“Bethy, stop it,” he groused. “I’m fine and you sound like mother.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and he stuck his out right back.  There was still a small sliver of mushroom on it and she made an exaggerated gagging noise.  Carver picked it off and gently put it on her face.  She elbowed him in the side and he responded by tickling her.

“Do they do this a lot?” she heard Anders ask.

“All the time,” Aiden replied.  She didn’t have to look up to know that he was rolling his eyes.

—

“Bethany, if I tell you something will you promise not to freak out and also please _don’t tell_ Aiden about it?” Carver asked.

They were yet another day (maybe?  Time was so strange now, she thought) into their isolation in the Deep Roads.  Her sniffles had gone away or maybe she was just so used to having a stuffed up nose that she hadn’t noticed.  What she did notice were the purple dents under Aiden’s eyes.  Varric said that they went well with his blue facial tattoos.  What she did notice was the way Anders’s face looked sallow.  What she did notice was that Varric seemed mostly none the worse for wear but even though he was from the surface, he was still a dwarf by blood.  As much as he hated it, his body adapted to being underground.  What she noticed most of all was how bad Carver looked.  If Aiden’s eyes looked a bit bruised from exhaustion, Carver’s looked as if someone had punched him in both eyes.  He didn’t look as gaunt or drawn out as Anders, though, since the one thing that didn’t seem diminished about him was his appetite.

“What is it?”

“Well…maybe you were a bit right.”

“About you being sick?”

“No.  About me fancying Fenris.”

“Oh.  Well, what do you mean?”

He bit his lip and glanced up at the lyrium-and-taint-caked walls.

“Well, I had a dream about him last night.”

Bethany screwed her face up and said, “Do I want to hear this?”

“Not that kind of dream, Bethy.  I dreamed that…he came down here.  I don’t know how.  Maybe just hacking through Darkspawn or something but he came down here for me.  To rescue me.  And he kissed me.  And I thought: oh, this wouldn’t be so bad.  Getting to kiss Fenris.”

She laughed a little.

“Well, when we get back to the surface, we can figure out how you can approach him.”

They always spoke in “whens” and not “ifs” down here.

“What do you mean?  I’m not going to—Bethany!” he hissed, eyes wide. “Fenris isn’t going to want to…be my lover.  He’s had a rough go of it.  He’s going to want someone who…I dunno, doesn’t blunder everything.”

Carver always got like this when he fancied someone.  In Lothering, he would mope around for days about why this person or that wouldn’t like him.  At least he had that option to go after those he fancied, she’d always thought with a measure of jealousy.  After hearing about how Aiden had accidentally caused lightning to crackle while he was making time with a farmer’s boy, she was afraid of doing anything with anyone.  Aiden had much more control than she did and if _he_ slipped up during sex, she could only imagine what would happen with _her_.

“We’ll see,” she said to him, patting him on his beefy arm.  She remembered a time when they were nearly the same size but that was eons ago.

“Don’t tell Aiden,” he said, slit-eyeing her. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Bethany made the motion of locking her mouth with a key.  Completely serious, Carver held out his pinkie and she locked her own with it.  They always sealed secrets this way even though they both knew they were too old for it.

“But can you ask him if we can stop soon?” he asked, breaking their hold.

“Why?”

They had only gotten moving what felt like a couple hours ago.

“I’m feeling a bit tired is all,” Carver said defensively. “But you need to ask him.  He’ll stop for you.”

He moved ahead a bit, stumbling on his feet a little in a way that wasn’t very noticeable but noticeable enough.  Bethany sighed and went to where Aiden and Anders were walking, their heads ducked together.

_He would stop for you, too,_ she thought.

—

When Carver fell, she wasn’t terribly surprised.  Even so, Bethany felt like it was her fault.  If she had kept on him more about how sick he was and insisted he bring it up to the others…maybe it wouldn’t have happened.

Aiden held him in his arms as Anders talked about knowing to find Wardens.  Bethany put it together as he explained about the Taint and it made her heart sink.  Carver was dying.  The Wardens could save him…if he became a Warden.  She was never going to see her brother again.  No more would he mumble into his pillow or tickle her or tease her.  Everything after that was a blur until there was the Warden: Stroud.

He had an Orlesian accent and a big thick moustache that she was sure Carver would have made fun of it he wasn’t…she looked at him, propped up on Aiden’s arm, narrowing avoiding getting skewered by the gauntlet he wore that had belonged to father.  Carver’s lips were cracked and an inky black.  His veins stood out a purplish black color and his eyes were pits.  How had she not noticed this before?  Had it accelerated that much?

Aiden heaved Carver up over to Stroud and she moved without thinking.  Before that moment, she had been living cushioned.  Cocooned from the moment Carver collapsed.  Moving and even fighting that small pocket of Darkspawn but moving as if someone else was pulling the strings.  Her mind had been lost in a fog.  Carver.  Gone.  She took a step forward and walked to where Carver was leaning on Stroud.

“I’m going as well,” she said, looking straight into her twin’s eyes.

Carver’s lips moved to probably form a protest but nothing came out.  His head bobbed on his shoulders in what she figured was probably him trying to shake it.

“Bethany?” Aiden’s voice sounded wounded.  She didn’t dare look at him. “You can’t.  I won’t…not you both.”

Stroud eyed her in a way she and Carver always called slit-eyeing someone.  He was intimidating if a bit silly-looking with that big moustache.

“Young lady, this isn’t a day trip to—”

“I’m going,” she fixed him with a fierce glare and, for one of the first times in her life, let magic crackle at her fingers to show how willing she was to follow through with her threat.

She turned to Carver and put a hand on his face.

“I’m not leaving him,” she said firmly.

—

The man who oversaw their Joining looked in need of a good laugh but Bethany wasn’t feeling very humorous herself.  He was tall and lean with a hawk-like nose and tired-looking eyes.  Even so, the turn of his mouth seemed kind and he let Carver go first.  When he spoke, his voice was a smoke-soaked gravel.

“Carver Hawke.  From this day forward, you are a Grey Warden.”

Another Warden overseeing it—a Dwarven girl with facial tattoos—had to help tilt his head back for him to swallow the blood in the chalice.  Carver’s eyes went back in his head and he collapsed and, for a moment, Bethany feared it was all for nothing.  The man flicked his eyes to Carver on the floor.

“He lives,” he said, turning to her.  He must have noticed the look on her face. “Your brother will awaken soon.”

She remembered Anders saying that not everyone survived the Joining.  He mentioned a girl dying during his.  The man turned to her and offered the chalice.

“Bethany Hawke, from this day forward, you are a Grey Warden.”

Bethany closed her eyes and took a sip.

When she opened them, she was on the floor of the chamber, head pounding.  She had had flashes in her mind and some sort of singsong music.  Images of Darkspawn with their hissing, gaping jaws and curved, deadly swords.  Next to her, Carver was still unconscious.

“Your brother had the Taint.  It had progressed far into his blood…it may take him a bit longer than you to awaken.”

She remembered that voice—the man from before.  Bethany would have been lying if she had remembered his name, though.  He had introduced himself when she had brought Carver in with her and she had been too preoccupied thinking of him.

“Don’t we both, now?” she asked, turning her head to the side.

He chuckled darkly and said, “I suppose you could say that.”

The Dwarven girl who had helped Carver bounced over, stepping lightly in her leather boots.

“Neither of you died, at least!” she said brightly. “No one died in mine…well, it was only me.  And I was already dead technically.”

“Twice over,” the man said back, his lips twisting into a smile.

Bethany had no idea what she was talking about but at that moment, she didn’t really care.  She kept her eyes on Carver.  His veins weren’t standing out and the circles under his eyes were diminished.  He still didn’t have his warm glow back yet, though, although that may have been from what may have been weeks underground.

“When you’ve both recovered, we’ll send for you,” the man said, putting a gloved hand on her shoulder in a way she figured was probably meant to be comforting but he was clearly someone unaccustomed to such gestures. “Sigrun, will you show Lady Hawke to her room?”

Bethany was about to correct him that she wasn’t nobility (or maybe she was and mother had gotten their estate restored—who knew?) but she instead moved over to where Carver still lay and locked her hand in his.

“Not without him,” she said, giving him a stern look.

“I will take him to his quarters,” the man replied, sighing. “You will be notified the moment he wakes up, I assure you.”

She went with the Dwarven girl he had called Sigrun reluctantly, glancing over her shoulder to check on Carver until he was out of sight.

“Is he your husband?” Sigrun asked as she led her down the hall in the Keep.

Bethany hadn’t noticed how grand it was before—her mind had been elsewhere.  At Sigrun’s words, she nearly choked.

“Carver’s my brother!” she exclaimed, covering her mouth. “We aren’t…oh, Maker, no.  He’s my twin.”

Sigrun laughed a little and said, “Oh, that explains it, then.  I was wondering why you were so attached to him.”

“Well, we look related, don’t we?”

She always thought they did—moreso when they were little.  Especially that time Carver cut her hair to look like his because she’d asked him to.  He’d used a knife and it had looked like her head had been chewed.  Still, they had the same dark olive skin and brown eyes.  The same black hair.

“I can never tell.  All you humans look the same to me.”

—

Bethany was led to a room that looked mostly comfortable.  Sigrun told her that this particular Keep was large enough that they got their own rooms rather than barracks.  Plus, she had added, their numbers in Ferelden were still so low that any barracks would have been fairly empty anyway.  At the mention of that--of Ferelden--Bethany nearly laughed.  She had always wanted to go back to Ferelden but she hadn’t meant like this.

Her room was nice, though, much nicer than the smelly hole she shared with her brothers back in Kirkwall.  It had a plush, blue carpet on the stone ground and her bed has rushes in the mattress—a proper mattress at that.  Even their house in Lothering hadn’t had such luxuries that had been the nicest place they ever settled.  On the wall was a portrait of Mabari hounds running and it struck her as very Ferelden and her heart warmed a bit for her first time since arriving.

The door to her chambers flew open and she tore her eyes away from the portrait to see who her visitor was.  Carver stood in the doorway, panting a little and looking extremely angry.

“Carver,” she said, raising her eyebrows in surprise and trying to ignore his obvious rage. “They said they were going to get me when you awoke.”

He stomped into her room and got in her face.

“Bethy!” he snapped. “Why did you do that?  Why did you…you shouldn’t have!  You shouldn’t be here!”

He didn’t make much sense but Bethany knew what he met.

“I wasn’t going to let you go through this alone,” she said and her voice went up an octave at the end as her throat tightened with worry.  Worry at the thought that he was angry with her.  Worry of what would have happened if she hadn’t gone forward.

“This isn’t…you heard Anders talk about the Wardens.  He didn’t say anything about the legends!”

She rolled her eyes.  Carver was so obtuse.  Did he honestly think she had gone with him for some sort of glory?

“I don’t care about those legends.  If you recall, I never have!  I came because you were dying and you were leaving and…I didn’t want to lose you.”

She stared at him, still all puffed up and ready for a fight so fresh off of beating death.  He was in her blood, she wanted to tell him.  She wouldn’t let him be tainted while she wasn’t.  She wasn’t going to let him out of her sight again like when he left for Ostagar.  She pacified him and he made her act out a bit more.  They could be nowhere but together.


End file.
